A New York City man filed a lawsuit this month seeking $400,000 in damages after a pair of police officers mistook his cigarette break for a suicide attempt.

Mark Moody, a 40-year-old trial lawyer, was sitting on the window sill of his second-floor apartment, smoking a cigarette back in August when he says a police car stopped in front of his building. One of the officers got out and asked him if he was trying to commit suicide.

"If I was going to commit suicide, this would be a pretty dumb place to do it...If I jumped from here, I'd just sprain my ankle," Moody recalls telling the officer, in an interview with the New York Post.

When Moody refused the officers' request that he come downstairs, he says three ambulances and four other police cars arrived on the scene. A police officer entered his apartment, lifted him out of the window and handcuffed him.

Moody says he was taken by ambulance to Beth Israel Medical Center for a psychiatric evaluation, where he was quickly discharged with an apology for the misunderstanding.